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Monday, August 29, 2011

Oh, the Nuances of Social Media!

The other morning I popped onto Google+ to discover that a quasi famous person was following me. I checked out this person and while I'm sure that's she's great at what she does I wasn't particularly interested in following her back (or putting her in one of my circles as the Google+ lingo goes).

The problem was that she was following a number of genealogists, people in my community. She doesn't appear to have anything to do with genealogy. Personally I think she was just looking for more fans to follow her. That in itself is not a problem. The problem arises as she follows more genealogists in that they appear in her side bar as "people in common." These are people that she and I are both following. If someone else where to look at her profile and try to decide whether to follow the person or not, they might receive tacit approval just by seeing my face in common with this person.

I know we are all grownups and can decide who to follow or not but honestly many people just check who is following who and make quick decisions that way. I mean I feel like I'm endorsing an advertisement or "liking" a page on Facebook. Yet in this case I'm not really giving my approval.

So what's a girl to do? I don't really mind this person following me even though I think she is just fishing for fans. But what options do I have so that I don't appear on her wall? The only option I have is to block her and then I won't appear in her "people in her circles" sidebar. This is the only way I can think of to remove the tacit approval that will lead to more followers for her.

In all honesty, blocking, just like on Twitter, is fairly harmless. It's not like I "reported" anyone which is more serious. And on Google+ you can even unblock someone later. I just wish I didn't have to take that measure for this particular reason.

This got me thinking about how I can stop this kind of thing in the future. It is possible to hide your connections on Google+. In fact, I hide all my connections except genealogists. This makes it easier for genealogists to connect and spares my non-genealogy family and friends from being followed by genealogists.

But what about these people looking for fans who raid our public circles? I was thinking about hiding the "Have Marian in circles" display so that genealogists won't find these random people and think they are genealogists. Or I could hide both that circle and my "In Marian's circles" display. But I would really hate to do that. I would like to keep the openness in social media.

For the time being I am leaving them both public. But I reserve the right to change my mind later.

14 comments:

This is an interesting post. Generally, I think that the main reason people are on social media to begin with is to as you so aptly put it "fish for fans." Well, at least in the circles I'm in which is the writing and publishing industry. And I don't mind that because it's part of the purpose of social media. But I tend to enjoy those who work at building relationships with me, where the ones just fishing and that's all they do are really just names.

I don't care. The fact that it says that you have this person in a circle means nothing to me. For all I know, it's a circle called "Losers" or "People I Can't Stand" or "In-Laws." I don't have any idea why you chose to follow that person back, and it's none of my business. It shouldn't factor into my decision as to whether to follow them myself.

I have a strong bias in favor of following people back, on G+ and Facebook and (especially) Twitter. If I decide that I don't like the person, I can always unfollow. But to give them a cursory glance and say to them, "Gee, I get that you want to hear from me, but I've taken one look and decided I don't want to hear from you" is...not for me. Unless they're obviously spammers or celebrities or faceless corporations, I give them the benefit of the doubt. It's not like they're going to see any private info from me, because I don't put that stuff out there in the first place.

There are two different professional genealogists I recently followed on Twitter. Both were in areas where I need research done but can't go anytime soon, so I was checking them out in advance of possibly hiring them. Apparently they both looked me over and decided they didn't want to know me, because they didn't follow me back. So I guess I need to find someone else to hire.

That's the thing...you can't tell by looking who's following you. It might be a long-lost cousin, a potential client...who knows. But if you refuse to even start a conversation, you won't ever find out.

Marian, I've had the same experience with - probably - the same person and I've blocked her. I've also had people put me in their circles who are clearly touting for business (in non-genealogy related areas). I've blocked them as well.

I've had a handful of people include me in their circles who appear to have no connection to genealogy (despite the fact that we have lots of genea-people in common). And they have large numbers of people following them. If I don't see any posts indicating an interest in genealogy or some other major common interest, I just don't follow back.

I have also been thinking on this because I have several people who are not involved in genealogy in my circles. The other day I did not add someone. I do not see any reason why I should at this point. I have added some people because other "genealogists" had them in their circle, but I made a separate circle which basically says these people are unknown to me. I make sure and check out the person now and do not go by who has them in their circles. I will probably move some people around to different circles also. I do not want to delete genealogy people, I want to make sure they are talking my language first, some say they are involved in genealogy, and talk about anything but!

I agree mostly with Kerry. On G+ and even more so on Twitter, I get follows out of the blue from a variety of people and businesses. I look at each and every one of the profiles, and decide based on displayed behaviors or what they're representing whether to follow back. If I find them offensive, I block and report. If I simply don't care, I allow the follow but don't follow back. If we have anything in common at all, I follow back.

I wrote a bunch more, but it was turning into a blog post of its own, and the topic was beginning to drift a little, so I'll just post it on my blog. :-)

Interesting post. Having never joined Facebook I just joined G+, strictly for genealogy purposes. I had created a bare-bone profile and hadn't added anyone to my circles. But a I got a message saying that someone had added me to theirs...I have no idea who the person is although her profile contained the word "genealogy", as did mine. I'm not familiar enough with the ins & outs of G+ so have not taken any action so far. I'll be monitoring! Deb H

I have a genealogy circle, and other circles. I do like that G+ lets me decide who a post applies to. Now, there have been a few people who I felt were questionable, and had nothing to do with genealogy as far as I could tell from their profile. One with wings on her photo... blocked. She was creepy! If they don't have the word genealogy in their profile, blocked. My stream is busy enough. If they can't be bothered to use enough words in their profile to tell me something about them, I won't bother to link back to them. The other thing I review is their wall posts. I find the new is wearing off of G+ and it's not as busy as it was a month ago. So, maybe now is a good time to review those 'people in common,' but the word genealogy needs (for me) to be in the profile or I'll go right past them!

I'd like to comment on what Kerry Scott said. Please don't assume that if someone doesn't follow you back on Twitter, it means they "looked you over and decided they didn't want to know you". Not everyone uses Twitter the same way. Please don't take offence. In 99.9% of cases, none is intended.

I hear what you're saying, Judy, but I'm not sure 99.9% is the right number.

Not following back is a lot like using the CAPS LOCK key. Not everyone uses CAPS LOCK the same way. Some people type everything in caps because they like to, or they don't like to use the Shift key, or whatever.

But enough people perceive CAPS LOCK sentences as shouting that it's something you should be aware of if you choose to use it that way.